Posts Tagged Economic Disaster in India

Intensive Economic Crisis Threatens India’s Federal UnionBy

Sajjad Shaukat

One of the important causes of the disintegration of the former Soviet Union was that its greaterdefence expenditure exceeded to the maximum, resulting into economic crisis inside the country.In this regard, about a prolonged war in Afghanistan, the former President Gorbachev haddeclared it as the “bleeding wound.” However, militarization of the Soviet Union failed incontrolling the movements of liberation, launched by various ethnic nationalities.Learning no lesson from India’s previous close friend-the former Russia, Indian fundamentalistPrime Minister Narendra Modi and leader of the extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is actingupon the similar policies. Modi has remained obstinate in his policies to make India an economicpower, implementing aggressive strategy against Pakistan and China, including other SouthAsian countries, increase in defence budget and escalation of arms race which has given a blowto regional balance of power.However, intensive economic crisis has started threatening India’s federal union whichcomprises 36 states and seven union territories. Acceleration of the economic crisis has not onlyincreased poverty in India, but also resulted in to multiple problems and crimes which haveexposed the myth of so-called “Incredible India.”In this respect, India figures among top 10 countries where highest number of rapes are takingplace every year. In 2015, as per National Crimes Record Bureau, 34,651 rape cases wereregistered in India. The year also witnessed registration of over 327,000 all sorts of crimesagainst women.The counterfeit drug industry is estimated to be worth $200 billion a year and has been definedas the “The crime of the 21st century.” India leads the 75% of counterfeit drugs supplied worldover. For Dr Pascoal Carvalho, a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, the figures showthat “India lost three million girls due to female infanticide.”Indian farmers are paying the price of apathy of Indian government to their sector. Past threedecades have witnessed an alarming increase in the suicides of Indian farmers and farm workerswhich stands around 300,000 since 1995. In this context, a former Manipur state policeman told journalists that he had been involved inmore than 100 extrajudicial executions in the state between 2002 and 2009. The Supreme Court,hearing a case related to over 1,500 extrajudicial executions in Manipur, ruled that armed forcespersonnel should not enjoy “blanket immunity” from trials in civilian courts.India constitutes 40% of the world’s 800m malnourished population and the highest rate ofunderweight children. 17% of India’s total population is undernourished. According to officialstatistics, 29% of children below the age of five are underweight in India. How can it be thatclose to 60 million Indian children are underweight even though India is a member of the G-20,the group of the economically most powerful countries in the world?

India has by far the largest electricity access deficit; exceeding 300 million people out of the 1.2billion people worldwide.

Besides, India is becoming a nightmare for journalists, lawyers and human Rights activists, asHindu extremists under Modi have unleashed terror against them. In the 2017 World PressFreedom Index, India sank three places to position 136 (least free). The 2017 India FreedomReport, published in May by media watchdog The Hoot, spoke of “an overall sense of shrinkingliberty not experienced in recent years”. It counted 54 reported attacks on journalists, at leastthree cases of television news channels being banned, 45 internet shutdowns and 45 seditioncases against individuals and groups between January 2016 and April 2017. In October 2016,“the Kashmir Reader”, a prominent English-language newspaper, was asked to stop publication;it returned to newsstands in December.India has become world’s 2nd ‘most racist’ country, which has also exposed the myth of Indianclaim of secular state and the largest democracy.It is noteworthy, on October 16, 2017, in an article, under the caption, “Sleepless in Modi’seconomy,” which was published by the daily Dawn, Delhi-based Indian journalist Latha Jishnuwrote, “Who is sleeping well in India in these days of economic gloom and the terrifying spectreof joblessness that is spreading across the country? It’s an intriguing line of inquiry sparked byPrime Minister Narendra Modi’s astounding response to worries articulated in public by eldermembers of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as well as economists and commercialorganisations. There are some people who sleep well only after they spread a feeling ofpessimism. We need to recognise such people…a decline in growth to 5.7 per cent in the lastfinancial quarter was unwarranted since it had fallen to much lower levels below that during theprevious Congress rule. Modi is right about that. But his response is revealing of the way he andthe BJP regime deal with criticism even within the party…Firstly, it uses fudged facts—thedecline in the growth has been consistent over six quarters—and neatly sidesteps inconvenienttruths (such as the lowering of growth rates by everyone from the IMF to the Reserve Bank ofIndia). However serious the issue, the doctrine of denial and deflection relies on ad hominemattacks and uses the abrasive language of the hustings to demolish critics. Above all, the rhetoricis dangerously delusional and sinks to ludicrous levels as when the BJP party chief claims the dipin growth rate is due to ‘technical reasons’ without explaining what these could be. As growthrates dip and industries fold up, unemployment remains a terrifying prospect for young India…From being the poster boy of the big economies in 2015 when it was the world’s fastest-growingbig economy India is turning into a laggard, problem child whose fundamental deficiencies arecoming into the spotlight. These deficiencies have been made worse by the economic disruptioncaused by the chaotic demonetisation exercise last November and the near standstill resultingfrom the GST, a poorly planned and implemented national tax system. If one needed a strongpointer to the consequences one has to look…Modi’s home state Gujarat where entrepreneurs arepulling the shutters on industry and putting their money into speculative finance…The growthrate of 5.7 pc in the second quarter of the 2017 financial year is not a bad thing as Modi claims,but as Yashwant Sinha, a former BJP finance minister, reminded Modi uncomfortably in a recentnewspaper article, the current figures of growth are all based on statistical fudge by changing themethodology for calculating the GDP. If the earlier method was used, the actual growth rate inthe last quarter would be a mere 3.7pc!

It further pointed out, “Sinha’s article encapsulates what economists have been pointing out overthe past year. “Private investment,” he says, “has shrunk as never before in two decades,industrial production has all but collapsed, agriculture is in distress, construction industry, a bigemployer of the work force, is in the doldrums, exports have dwindled, sector after sector of theeconomy is in distress.…So who is sleeping well in India?…Admittedly, there are deep structureproblems in the economy which have resulted in the economic mess. But what is also undeniableis that Modi’s capricious economic policies, such as the pointless demonetisation exercise,coupled with his government’s inability to implement the long planned GST—it has been in themaking for 16 years—have come as severe blows to the economy and the hopes of ademographically young country. Joblessness is looming large over India keeping awake millionsof desperate young people who are finding jobs disappearing at an alarming rate. In industryafter industry, from banking to capital goods, in premium sectors such as IT, the job losses are ofstaggering proportions….For much of this year, farmers have been kept awake by policies thatare positively inimical to their well-being, forcing them to agitate continuously, regardless of thebullets and indifference they have met with. So while economists, industry experts andgovernment official slug it over the figures of economic decline and job losses, academics,parents of the young and society in general are losing sleep over the fallout: the strains on thesocial fabric of India which has been rent by Hindutva politics. As violent young men,presumably of no fixed occupation, roam the streets looking for soft targets to vent their rage,cattle traders of the minority community and the untouchables of Hindu society have alreadyseen their livelihood disappear in the name of religion. The official crackdown on abattoirs hashad a serious impact on the economy with export of leather goods, an important foreignexchange earner, taking a beating.”It is notable that Indian defence expenditures have no bounds. In the past decade, India has spentbillions of dollars on purchases of arms, planes, radars and ships from the US, Russia, Britain,Germany, Israel and France including other western countries.In the recent past, in its report, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)disclosed that India is the world’s largest recipient of arms.It is mentionable that India test-fired its longest range surface-to- surface nuclear ballistic missileAgni-5 on December 26, this year, which is capable of striking a target of more than 5,000 kmaway. The missile can carry a nuclear warhead of more than one tone. It can target almost all ofAsia including Pakistan and China and Europe, while, the Agni-6 is reported to be in early stagesof development, with a strike-range of 8,000-10,000 km.Nevertheless, New Delhi has initiated a deadly arms race and also compelled Islamabad andBeijing to follow the suit.While, an estimated 30 major armed insurgency movements are sweeping across India, reflectingan acute sense of alienation on the part of the people involved. Broadly, these can be divided intothree broad categories; movements for political rights i.e. Assam, Kashmir, South India andKhalistan, movements for social and economic justice i.e. Maoist (Naxalite) and North-Easternstates and movements based upon religious grounds like that of Laddakh. Tamil Nadu is anotherarea where separatist movements are haunting federation of India.

And, illiteracy, poverty and lack of economic opportunities have fueled the natives’ demand forautonomy and independence.Notably, Indian Minister of External affairs Jaswant Singh who served the BJP for 30 years wasexpelled from the party for praising Mohammad Ali Jinnah (Founder of Pakistan) and echoingthe pain of the Indian Muslims in his book, “Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence.” Whilepointing out the BJP’s attitude towards the minorities, Singh wrote: “Every Muslim that lives inIndia is a loyal Indian…look into the eyes of Indian Muslims and see the pain.” He warned in hisbook, if such a policy continued, “India could have third partition.”Nonetheless, poor economic policies, heavy defence spending, neglected social development,growing serpent of radical Hinduism and pressure politics are just few triggers of thesesecessionist movements, while Modi’s flawed policies have culminated into intensive economiccrisis which threatens India’s federal union. Consequently, like the former Soviet Union, thesepolicies will culminate into disintegration of the Indian union.